


Staten

by lamuella



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 21:17:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1872780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamuella/pseuds/lamuella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kids make dumb decisions, and smart kids make the dumbest decisions of all. This is a story about Richie Castellano growing up, and finding out why his brother acts the way he does. All characters are the property of their respective owners. I own nothing here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Staten

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alittlenutjob](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlenutjob/gifts).



1\. Port Dogkill

 

“You sure about this, Richie?” Stevie asked, nervously checking his reflection in the rear view mirror.

Richie sighed. “Stevie, don't be an asshole about this. You said I could be part of this deal.”

“I know what I said. I also know how drunk I was at the time. All I'm saying is if you feel like you need to walk away there's no shame in it.”

“This is about Danny, isn't it?”

Stevie checked the road, then turned to face Richie in the van's passenger seat. “Put yourself in my position. Your brother's my best friend. I'm always going to be thinking about him when I talk to you. You he has to forgive because you're family. Do you know how pissed he'd be with me if I got you in trouble?”

Richie laughed. “Trouble? You said you do this all the time. Besides, cigarettes are legal.”

“Yeah? Tell that to Customs.”

They drove in silence for a minute until they saw the exit for Port Dogkill. Stevie took the turn, then pulled into an unmarked and anonymous parking lot.

“Okay,” Stevie said, turning off the engine. “If you're going to go through with this, I want you to know what you're getting into. The Marinovs sell Marlboros for ten bucks a carton. I can sell them to bars and coffee shops for their machines for twenty. Now, they ain't _exactly_ Marlboros but they smoke like them. Besides, the bars ain't exactly paying Marlboro prices.”

“So everyone wins?” Richie asked sardonically.

“Everyone I deal with, anyway. So, you want in? Five hundred bucks gets you eight hundred after my finder's fee.”

Richie looked at Steview as if seeing him for the first time. Until now his brother's best friend had been like a weird fun uncle, a funny if sketchy character who always had bootlegs of the latest CDs, sometimes even before they hit the stores. Now Richie was seeing the grifter behind the grift. The usual jokes were replaced by serious business, and Richie felt a burst of pride that for once Stevie wasn't just treating him like Danny Castellano's little brother.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I want in.”

Stevie closed his eyes and nodded. “All right. Well, goes without saying that your brother never hears about this, okay?”

“I'm not a dumbass, Stevie.”

“Of course not,” Stevie answered and looked in the mirror. “Wait, it looks like they're here.”

Richie turned to see a  van pull up behind them. A gaunt man with salt and pepper hair got out of the driver's side  and was joined by two stocky colleagues .

“We're up,” Stevie said. “Come with me and help load.”

Richie nodded and got out, feeling his heart start to race. He and Stevie walked over and stood by the back doors of the van, where he struck the closest thing he knew to a tough guy pose.

“Where's Dmitry?” Stevie asked.

“Stomach flu,” the gaunt man said in a thick eastern European accent. “You deal with me today. My name is Sergei. And you?”

“Richie.”

Stevie shot him a warning look, then looked back to Sergei. “We're the guys buying what you're selling, if the price is right. We still looking at nine per carton, right?”

“Eleven.”

Stevie held his hands up. “Whoa, that's not what we agreed with Dmitry.”

“No, with Dmitry you agreed ten but then you lied to me. Eleven or we find someone else.”

“Then you find someone else,” Stevie said and walked back towards the driver's seat.

“Stevie!” Richie called after him, before turning to Sergei. “Will you do ten twenty five?”

“Ten fifty.”

“All right, you got a deal,” Richie said.

“Yes, we do,” Sergei said, his accent suddenly vanishing. “Just not the one you were thinking of. NYPD, nobody move!”

Richie turned to run, only to hear a door slam and Stevie peel off in the truck. Before he could make it more than three steps he was tackled to the ground.

“Sorry... Richie, was it? You're staying right here.”

“Should we get after the van?” one of Sergei's associates asked.

“Get the plates to uniform. Richie here can tell us about the driver, can't you, son?”

The gaunt man, whose name certainly wasn't Sergei, pulled Richie to his feet. Head spinning, Richie Castellano was thrown in the back of a squad car.

 

2\. 122nd Precinct

 

“All right, Richie, let's go over it one more time,” Sergeant Lang said, leaning forward across the table.

Richie leaned back. “There's nothing to go over. It happened how I say it did.”

“So this is the story you're sticking to? You were out walking in your neighbourhood when this guy you'd never seen before pulled up in a U-Haul and asked if you wanted to make some quick and legal money. You're going to college in Miami in a month so the offer was tempting. Rather than suspect that this total stranger in a windowless van might mean you harm or be in any way breaking the law you decided he must be a good samaritan handing out business opportunities to high school graduates and you hopped in the passenger seat. Everything accurate so far?”

Richie shrugged and looked away.

Sergeant Lang flipped over a page in his notepad. “So this total stranger told you that he was buying cigarettes from a business associate who had ordered too many cartons for his wholesaling business. Because as we all know cigarettes go bad if you don't smoke them in a week. You and this stranger – whose name you inconveniently forgot to ever ask – could buy them and them sell the cigarettes on to local businesses at a competitive rate. All he needs from you is five hundred dollars, which is coincidentally the exact amount of money you had in your pocket when you were booked. I can only presume you were out tonight taking your money for a walk. Richie, I have a three year old daughter who tells better stories than this. Are you going to tell me who your associate really was?”

Richie looked down at the table, his cheeks starting to flush. He wasn't fond of lying, even though he'd had to develop a talent for it in his early years whenever the subjects of parents or girls came up. Danny had always told him “Tell the truth if you can, but if you have to lie, make it work”. Not that this was great advice from his big brother who still sweated and avoided eye contact any time he was stretching the truth.

He looked over at the gaunt sergeant who had now dropped the fake accent entirely. “I've told you all I know,” he said. “I'd like a lawyer present before I answer any other questions.”

The sergeant sighed. “Are you asking for a lawyer because you think you need one? Or because that's what people do on TV. You may be acting the tough guy but I've got your sheet in front of me and it's so clean I'd let a baby sleep on it. No jail time, no fines, no arrests. You don't even have any parking tickets. Hell, I'd be willing to bet the last time you spoke to a cop was when Officer Friendly told you winners didn't do drugs.”

“Officer who?”

“Doesn't matter. What matters is that I can see through the act and I know you're crapping your pants, so just talk to me like I'm a grown up and save us both the hassle.”

Richie stared back at the sergeant for a minute. “You're right,” he said eventually. “I asked for a lawyer because that's what they do on Law & Order. The other thing that show taught me is that after I've asked for a lawyer nothing else I say is admissible until I've spoken to legal counsel. So let's just say I did know the guy you were talking about. If I told you his name now any case you built against him would be tainted. Is that right, or is that just what they say on TV?”

At least, that's what he meant to say. In reality he got as far as “I asked for a lawyer” before hot treacherous tears clouded his eyes and his voice broke down into sobs. It was then that the cop on the other side of the table did something unexpected.

“Hey, Richie, it's all right,” the sergeant said in a soft and reassuring voice. “Seriously. You're going to be okay.”

“No I'm not,” Richie answered, clearing his throat to make his voice less snotty. “I screwed up. I screwed everything up. My brother's going to be pissed, he'll tell me I broke my mom's heart.”

“Listen to me, if your mom didn't think her sons would make mistakes she should have had mannequins instead of boys. People screw up, it doesn't always mean the end of the world. Look, we can play it two ways. We can get you a lawyer. We'll let your family know. Your name will go in the blotter and everyone on Staten will know you got busted for dealing knockoff Marlboros. That would suck for you and wouldn't do me much good either. Or you can spend the rest of the night in this room, talking to me, and walk out of this precinct in the morning with the understanding that I never see your face again.”

Richie laughed behind the tears. “What?”

“I mean it. You're a good kid. You're off to college in a month and I don't want to see you lose your place or your scholarship on a dumb decision.”

“How did you know I had a scholarship?”

“You're a kid from Staten heading to college out of state. That means you're either a rich kid or a bright kid and you're not a rich kid. Look, it's past 2AM now. We can put you in the system and I can go home, or you can talk to me for a couple of hours and at six I'll call your dad to come pick you up.”

“My dad's- he won't be there. You'd have to call my brother.”

“Does that mean you're going to talk to me?”

Richie hesitated, then nodded.

“All right then. Call me Charlie. You want some coffee?”

For the next couple of hours, Richie opened up to this total stranger in the way he could never have to someone he was close to. Even with Danny – especially with Danny – the stakes were too high. Richie had never really had to come out, as far as his mom and brother were concerned he had never been in, but friends had told him that it was normal for gay kids to come out to a comparative stranger before anyone else. It let them assert their identity without risking a consequence or disapproval. This was the same. He told Charlie about his father leaving, about Danny having to be more than a brother, about the strange combination of guilt and indulgence that was the Castellano household in full swing. He told him that turning 500 dollars into 800 would have meant not having to ask Danny for money for the whole of his first semester. Charlie listened, patient and quiet, sometimes asking questions but usually just letting Richie speak. Four cups of coffee and two bathroom trips later, Charlie stretched, yawned, and looked at his watch.

“Well, it's coming up to six. You need me to call your brother to come get you?”

“Not just yet,” Richie answered, and felt unaccountably nervous as he did.

“Why not? You sound like your scared of him.”

“What? No, I love Danny.”

“You can be scared of people you love, Richie,” Charlie said. “Of them, of what they do, of what they might do.”

Richie nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”

“So what are you scared that Danny might do?”

Richie was silent for a long time. Finally he swallowed and spoke. “Leave.”

“Like your dad left?”

“I don't want to be such a screwup that Danny walks away from me. He works at the hospital at NYU, he could get an apartment with his fiancée and not have to take the ferry every morning. He's tied to Staten because I'm here. If I mess up badly enough maybe he'll just leave me alone with my mistakes.”

“Has he ever done anything that makes you think he'd walk out like that?”

Richie shook his head. “He flips out about dumb stuff every now and then, like when I signed up for Colombia House and he yelled at me for half an hour about how it was a Ponzi scheme, but he's always been there for me.”

Charlie stood up from the table. “One last question. Do you think your brother would take this better coming from some cop he's never heard of, or coming from you?”

Richie understood. He allowed himself to be led to the payphone in the hall. Charlie dropped in some change and Richie dialed.

“Hey, Danny? Um... can you come pick me up?”

 

3\. Mariner's Harbor

 

“I still can't believe you were such a bonehead!” Danny Castellano snarled as they ascended the stairs of their walk-up.

“Danny-”

“No, Richie, I'm not finished. Cigarettes? What, breaking the law wasn't enough and now you want cancer?”

“I wasn't smoking them, Danny, Jesus!”

“Oh, and now you're taking his name in vain. How many other ways are you going to disappoint Mom before we get through the front door?”

Richie stomped ahead of his brother in silence. When he got to the door of their apartment he fumbled for his keys, forgetting that he'd emptied his pockets at the precinct and everything was jumbled up.

“Here,” Danny said, reaching past him and unlocking the door. “Get inside.”

Richie had been fearing that his mother would be waiting, eyes welling with tears and recriminations, and was guiltily relieved to find she wasn't there.

“Where's Mom?” he asked.

“Took an early shift for overtime. She doesn't know you were arrested and if I have my way she never will. Sit down for a minute.”

“Look, I've been up all night, I need to get some sleep.”

“Sit your butt down, you can sleep after we get a few things straight.”

Richie sighed and sat on the couch. Danny sat in the armchair opposite.

“Okay,” Danny began. “From what they said at the precinct you're not being charged with anything. The arrest will stay on your record but without charge or conviction it just means you were helping police with their inquiries. That means you didn't screw up your ride, but the fact that you were lucky doesn't stop you being stupid. What exactly were you thinking?”

“I wasn't thinking anything. I'm an idiot. Is that what you want to hear?”

“That right there is the problem. You're not an idiot. You're super smart, smarter than me. I was never the smartest kid in class, so I had to get ahead by busting my ass. You're just about the smartest kid in your school, the problem is that you know it and you think that being intelligent means you can goof off without consequence. So tell me, what was it that was so important that you needed three hundred dollars for it but you couldn't come to me.”

“Nothing!” Richie yelled. “It wasn't _for_ anything at all. I was just sick and tired of having to come to you every time I needed something. You always had your own money, so you don't know how it feels to have to account to your brother why you bought a six pack of soda instead of a two litre bottle.”

“The two litre's less than two thirds the price and you get twice as much soda! Why would you not go for it?”

“Listen to yourself, Danny, that's exactly my point! I'm a grown man now and I shouldn't have to justify my soda buying habits just because you hold the purse strings.”

“Grown enough that you got busted for buying counterfeit cigarettes from an undercover cop.”

Danny's words hung in the air, and Richie bit his lip so he wouldn't say something he would regret.

After a long moment Danny broke the silence. “When I was your age I had my own money because I had no choice but to get a job. I started delivering newspapers when I was thirteen and I spent what I made on groceries because Mom wouldn't have been able to afford them otherwise. I worked through high school and medical school because I needed to. Yeah, I'm cheap sometimes, but when I was younger than you I learned that cheap was the difference between baloney sandwiches every night, and burgers one night followed by nothing the next.”

“When I was fifteen you tore up my McDonald's application,” Richie protested.

“Yeah, because you needed that time to study so you could get into a good school and get a life somewhere other than the Island. Problem is that while I was trying to protect you from the world you lived in I was teaching you to resent me. And that's when we get to last night's boneheaded stunt. Question is what we do now.”

Danny sat in silence for a minute, leaning the bridge of his nose against his thumb and forefinger. “All right, this is what we're going to do. You're going to college in a month, and you're going to work your ass off when you get there, inside class and out. I'll pay for your accommodation and your tuition if your scholarship gets screwed up, but that's it. No living allowance, and you're not getting a loan to make up the difference. You want to eat, you get a job. I'm sure there's restaurants in Miami, with your looks you'll make a fortune in tips. Come home at Christmas and we'll talk then. If you're doing all right, not getting involved in any more dumbassery, I'll start your living allowance again. Understood?”

“A job?” Richie asked. “You just got done telling me I needed to work harder in school. How can I do that if I'm spending all my free time bussing tables?”

“You're a smart kid, you'll figure it out,” Danny said. “I did. Maybe you'll learn a little about the value of money too.”

“Goddamn it, Danny, you're not my dad!”

The words were out of him before his brain had time to engage. Across the room Danny looked like Richie had just smacked him in the mouth.

“Yeah?” Danny said eventually. “Well, someone has to be. I have to get going, I have ward rounds in an hour. Get some sleep, and thank your lucky stars you didn't get charged.”

With that he left. Richie watched him go, knowing that he had just given his brother something else to bottle up. Danny tended to cope with things rather than deal with them, and that meant that his emotional wounds scarred or festered rather than healing.

Richie lay on his bed in silence after that, not even bothering to get changed. Sleep was a long time in coming.

 

4\. Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

 

“You sure he can't make it, Richie?” Stevie asked, adjusting the broken hand-mirror taking the place of the rear-view in the Geo Prism.

“He was assisting in some procedure or other,” Richie said. “He'd be here if he could, but-”

“But he can't. Yeah, I guess this medicine thing doesn't leave you with much free time. That's why I prefer my gig. I set my own hours and very few of the people I do business with are likely to show me their buttholes. Not none, but very few. So, ya looking forward to college?”

“I guess,” Richie said, looking out of the window.

“You don't sound thrilled at the prospect.”

“Well, I mean, school sounds great, but the moment I get there I have to get some stupid job so I can afford to eat.”

“That's the way of the world, Richie,” Stevie said. “Man's gotta eat.”

They rode in silence for a few minutes as they joined I-278. Shortly after that they were in the bridge, and officially out of Staten.

“Hey, Richie,” Stevie said. “Can I ask you something?”

“You just did.”

“Did you ever tell anyone?”

“Tell them about what?” Richie asked.

“You know what. Did you ever tell Danny about what happened in Port Dogkill?”

“Of course not. All he knows is that I screwed up.”

“Why didn't you tell him I was there?” Stevie asked, not taking his eyes off the road.

“What would be the point?” Richie answered. “It would get you in trouble with my brother without getting me out of it. It's bad enough that Danny knows his little brother got busted without finding out his best friend was there too. He needs you, Stevie. You keep him connected to the Island and now that I'm gone he needs something to maintain that connection. Tell him you bailed on me that night and he'll push you away. He'll put up his armour and eat the pain like he always does. I want to save him from that.”

They didn't say another word until the car got to JFK. In the departure zone Stevie pulled Richie's cases out of the trunk and handed them over.

“Here you go,” he said. “Have fun at college, and don't forget your pals on the Island.”

“How could I?” Richie said, laughing.

“One more thing,” Stevie said. “You don't have to get some stupid job the moment you get there. You could try and get an awesome job instead. Figure out what you're good at, then figure out how to get someone to pay you for it. Good luck, little guy.”

Stevie got back in the Geo and drove off. Richie wheeled his cases to the right desk and began the checking in process.

An hour and a half later as his plane took off, Richie felt a weight start to lift, a weight shaped like an island.

_Figure out what you're good at, then figure out how to get someone to pay you for it._

Richie thought about Miami, about the clubs, and about what he was good at. He'd think of something.


End file.
